Philippine President Fidel Ramos - his party caught in senatorial and local elections - played to the voting masses. He tried to get tough and appealed to Singapore's then President Ong Teng Cheong for a reprieve. It was turned down. New witnesses came forward with conflicting testimony. Some newspaper articles in the Philippines spoke of Contemplacion having being stripped naked by her interrogators and tortured into making a confession. Amid these accusations and recriminations, no one could prove she wasn't guilty. Worse still for her, she never denied she committed the murders.
At dawn on Friday 17 March 1995 Contemplacion was hanged on schedule and around the time she would normally start her gruelling 18-hour working day It was 6 a.m. The Singapore media ignored what was going on under its very nose and did not report the fomenting developments of the case. To them she was just another lowly maid 'gone bad'. They ignored the growing diplomatic riff. During the night before and the early hours leading up to the execution thousands of her country-folk gathered in small groups across the tiny island. They held silent vigils as a prequel to a secret plan to converge on Changi Prison for a final, vociferous mass demonstration to show their horror and disgust to a disinterested if uninformed Singapore at what was about to take place in their name. Back in the Philippines, the Alex Boncayao Brigade, an armed Communist group, threatened to punish Singaporean and Filipino officials whom they accused of ignoring Contemplacion's plight for too long. The Catholic church, which wields enormous influence, also condemned the execution. But it made no difference. Singapore was impervious to all the pleas that poured in from all around the world.
For Darshan Singh, hanging Flor Contemplacion or any woman for that matter is no different from hanging a man. He was up bright and early on that Friday morning, arriving at the prison in a chauffeured prison vehicle at 4 a.m. He was on schedule. He was dressed casually as always - shorts, singlet and sandals - and he went about his business in his usual calm and methodical way. He had already made complete preparations according to the rules the day before. Contemplacion had been weighed and her physique judged for him to calculate how far she should drop before coming to a neck-breaking halt and then oblivion. Being slightly built and not very tall, for her it was the long drop. Just long enough to do the job without decapitating her. A short drop would cause painful strangulation. And he had given her long pep talks trying to make her feel as relaxed as possible at what he had to do to her. He explained that he did not want to hang her, it was his job, and she had been sentenced by the court. That was none of his doing. She was asked if she would like to donate her organs saying that her life would not have been entirely worthless if she could save someone else. It was so long ago he could not remember if she signed the consent document or not.
A final photograph, wearing her best clothes, was taken for her family to remember her by. Darshan Singh assured her she would feel no pain; that it would be over in a split second. 'You don't want to spend the rest of your life in this terrible place', he told her so many times during these pep talks in her cell until she must have been convinced of this herself. 'That would be a living death, wouldn't it', he would always add. It was nearing dawn. Just minutes away. He checked his watch and then shackled her arms behind her back and led her to the final steps to the gallows close to her cell. Once on the trap door, her legs were quickly strapped together as is the rule. This is to prevent any last minute panic struggling. Then he uttered those now memorable words he first revealed to me in that historic interview shortly before he hanged Nguyen Van Tuong: 'I am sending you to a better place than this'. He added quietly: 'God bless you, Flor'. Darshan Singh pulled the lever. The twin trapdoors disappeared from under her feet. It was all over in a split second as he promised. Her neck broken where he calculated it would and, as according to custom, she was left to hang grotesquely for ten to twenty minutes before she was taken down. The execution was witnessed by the prison governor, a doctor, her priest and some other senior officials. Shortly afterwards, Darshan Singh returned to his home in an official car with a cheque for his morning's work. It was $325 - the rate that particular year.
Still the debate raged. Her remains were exhumed for fresh examination by international experts. It changed nothing. All the time, the drama was being played out against a backdrop of increasingly strident street demonstrations across her homeland, flag-burning, recalled ambassadors and cancelled trade and state visits. Ramos sacked the previous ambassador to Singapore, Francisco Benedicto, and suspended the then current ambassador, Alicia Ramos. Foreign Secretary Roberto Romulo resigned, taking responsibility for what the public viewed as a failure to safeguard Contemplacion's interests. His resignation was soon followed by that of Labor Secretary Nieves Confessor.
Three 'quickie' movies, including The Flor Contemplacion Story appeared in the Philippines, each purporting to tell what really happened. The movies and media reports were highly emotive with torture scenes and Contemplacion being drugged, denied food, water and the toilet, water-boarded, even molested by the Singapore police in a bid to extract a confession. A Manila journalist wrote: 'If there is a real story of Contemplacion, it is not that she did or did not kill two people in Singapore. It is that, in her death, she came to symbolise the millions of Filipinos driven by poverty to leave their families and take their chances abroad. Some are looked down on as little more than modern-day serfs; others are treated with dignity. But all are where they are because they have yet to benefit from Asia's prospering economies'.
It took a very long time for the things to simmer down in Manila. President Ramos set up an inquiry into the case and ordered the exhumation of Delia Maga's remains to determine how she died. The controversy raged that Contemplacion did not commit either murder. However, the new inquiry seemed to conclude that she probably was guilty not withstanding the appalling conditions she worked under that drove her to madness. But many people in the Philippines still believe to this day that she was innocent. 'Singapore might sensibly have considered granting a stay of execution as requested by President Ramos and it is hard to see how doing so would have damaged its criminal justice system', said another observer in Manila. Her mental condition should have been taken into consideration and as is customary in her
country, where the death penalty was still on the statute books at that time though rarely carried out. She would have been provided with a lawyer to advise her during the initial investigations and advised of her rights. This is not permitted in Singapore. The police must be free to carry out their investigations and interrogate the accused without hindrance.
Public sympathy was also with her because of the treatment so many poor and poorly educated Filipino migrant workers are subjected to in overseas countries. No consideration as to her mental history or state of mind on that fateful day was given when she was sentenced to death even though investigators concluded that she had snapped' under the stress of her 18 hour hard slogging days without a break - forced to do so by her slave driver employer. According to statistics, the economy in the Philippines, was heavily dependent on the more than $2 billion sent home annually in the 1990s by an estimated four million Filipinos, the majority women, who work overseas. Although President Ramos seemed initially resigned to the execution, he called Contemplacion a heroine. His wife went to Manila airport to receive the coffin and Ramos sent a wreath to the funeral. He also provided financial help to her dependent children. Regardless of her innocence or guilt, others took up Flor Contemplacion's execution as a rallying cry against the inhumane, abusive, and exploitative working conditions that many of their domestic workers and labourers face abroad. And it was quite a different story when another Filipino maid was arrested in Singapore in 2005 for what became known as 'The Body Parts Murder'.
14
The Maid Singapore Could Not Hang
When Filipina maid Guen Aguilar appeared in court on 15 September 2005 charged with one of the most gruesome murders in Singapore history, the diplomatic turn-out from her country's embassy as
tounded everyone. The ambassador, Belen Anota, flanked by top diplomatic officials and prominent members of the Filipino community filed into the courtroom. Other Filipinos, mostly young domestic workers and labourers packed the public gallery and stood in groups around the courthouse. Two of Manila's biggest television stations sent camera crews and another dozen print writers and photographers arrived to cover the proceedings. Their numbers were swelled by international wire services including AFP, AP, Reuters and representatives from the local media such as The Straits Times, Today and The New Paper.
Guen Aguilar was facing death by hanging for the murder of her close friend Jane La Puebla, a fellow maid from her home town. But in Manila and across the Filipino diaspora her execution would be regarded almost as an act of war. Her seemingly inevitable ghastly end had all the makings of yet another 'trial of the century' in her country and it sent shock waves through Singapore's corridors of power and fury in the Philippines. It was a particularly ominous sign, and with good cause. Although it was almost ten years since another Filipina maid had been found guilty of two murders and hanged, everyone remembers the name: Flor Contemplacion. Her execution sparked political upheaval in the Philippines and a bitter diplomatic row resulting in a huge backlash against Singapore which still resonates to this day. Even when the atmosphere thawed things were never quite the same again. Despite the ghastliness of Jane La Puebla's murder, the immediate message from Manila was clear. When Guen Aguila, a 29 year-old mother of two, appeared in court to be formally charged a huge crowd waving placards was already demonstrating outside the Singapore embassy in Manila demanding that this time a fair trial would be held for their fellow citizen. It was an early warning signal to Singapore. The atmosphere was getting tense again.
Exactly why Aguilar killed her friend never came out at her trial. Some unconfirmed reports said they quarrelled over money. Another said it was over a love triangle with a Singapore taxi driver. The hunt for the killer began when dismembered parts of a woman's body were found in various part of the city. Arms and legs were found in bags in and around an Orchard Road shopping centre. Then a woman's partly clad torso was found at McRitchie Reservoir, a beauty spot popular with joggers, picnickers and tourists. It puzzled detectives that Aguilar would kill and dismember her close friend then dump her body parts where everyone could see them. Back home the case made garish headlines but everyone from the president down was determined Aguilar got a fair trial and would not be cast aside and executed by Singapore as just another 'havoc maid'.
This time the authorities in Singapore and the Philippines quickly realised the potential damage the case could cause again if it was allowed to get out of control. The turnout from Aguilar's embassy and the ambassador himself made that very clear. They would be watching every aspect of the police investigation and trial very closely. Her husband was flown in at government expense. He was allowed to see her in her cell as soon as he arrived. This was something almost unheard of in Singapore while a serious case like this was still under investigation. Even though it was being forced to do so, Singapore was doing its best to show a little rare humanity. Aguilar broke into tears as she first saw her husband, Edwin, flanked by the large contingent of her fellow citizens stand shoulder to shoulder inside the courtroom. All this kind attention to Aguilar's welfare was a far cry from the way Flor Contemplacion was treated. She had been virtually ignored by her embassy until it was too late for any kind of government level intervention or support. Bilateral ties had since been normalised and Singapore was once again a major investor in the Philippines but there would always be a bitter taste in the mouths of many Filipinos - and Singapore knew it only too well. The Philippine government also appealed to its media to stop sensational reporting. 'We don't want a repeat of the Flor Contemplacion furore', Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez told The Straits Times. He feared they could whip up public sentiment and trigger an unwarranted backlash against Singapore again. But this time both countries were determined not to have a replay of that particular tragedy. To emphasise this Ambassador Anota made it clear they would be hands-on all the way. Daily press releases about what was happening were issued by his embassy every few days. Singapore officials also issued regular updates to the media. It was obvious that Aguilar was being treated with more than kid glove sensitivity for someone who had allegedly committed such a gruesome crime. Even so, remembering what happened to Contemplacion, leftist and feminist groups, human rights activists and the media in Manila took the opportunity to denounce Singapore as a 'barbaric, tyrannical and totalitarian state with no respect for human rights'. Officials even invited coroner's examiners from the Philippines to perform a joint autopsy on the deceased, to avoid any possible accusations of a frame- up. Twelve hours after her arrest police seized a cleaver at the premises where she worked. Aguilar and La Puebla, both domestic helpers, had been neighbours and close friends, they discovered. Police also took possession of CCTV video footage showing the two women together shortly before her death. Forensic evidence also connected the dots. There was plenty of blood to work with.
Aguilar's two sons Mark, 7, and Edwin, 6, were at home in the Philippines. Their father Edwin, a farmhand, tried to explain what had happened. They had not seen their mother since August 2002 when she left to work as a maid in Singapore. They were hoping she would be home for Christmas - just as she had promised in her last text message just after 7 p.m. on Friday 9 September, the very night Singaporeans were learning of the gruesome killing on the television. The dead woman's husband and two sons Nueva Vizcaya, 9, and Clifford, 7, and were heartbroken. "They are inconsolable, they cannot come to grips with their loss', said her sister Julie Parangan at the time. 'It's so painful to hear that my sister has been killed like that and by her best friend', she said.
The Philippine National Bureau of Investigation was allowed to send pathologists, Cesar Bisquera and Raquel Fortun, to observe La Puebla's autopsy. Unlike the Philippines, the police in Singapore hold suspects without access to counsel while investigations are still underway. That also caused some consternation among legal advisers in Manila. They recalled what happened to Contemplacion; she was interrogated for days and quickly confessed to the crimes. Her own country folk knew little of her predicament and her embassy virtually ignored her. She was easy meat for the Lion City. But, more ominous for Aguilar, unlike Philippine law, the Singaporean justice system doesn't consider insanity as a ground for acquittal. Even though she was properly examined by psychiatrists who said she was mentally unbalanced at the time of the murders, she could still have received the death penalty. I found from my searches of court records that such cases are not unusual in Singapore. Whatever her mental condition, however, none of the families believed Aguilar could have committed such a gruesome crime and instead suspected La Puebla's Australian landlord and employer. Paulina Antonio, La Puebla's mother, revealed to a Manila reporter that she had received a phone call from this man before the murder was discovered. Antonio said: 'He told me he was very much worried about Jane's disappearance, but how come that, when Jane's body parts were found, he did not even call us for consolation or, at least, confirmation?'
'Jane's Australian boss called me Wednesday telling me that she went out Tuesday night and did not come home. He called me again last Thursday informing that Jane was still missing. And then another call came Friday informing me that the police were already notified of her disappearance', said Gerry Antonio, La Puebla's stepfather, who theorised that the landlord made the series of calls only to establish in any later investigation that he was looking for La Puebla on the first day she disappeared. He suspects that the landlord planted the alleged murder weapon, a cleaver, in Aguilar's house. Singapore newspapers published details such as Aguilar's bloody fingerprints supposedly found on the bags containing La Puebla's remains and of surveillance cameras showing the two maids together. Meanwhile, ordinary Filipinos had their own ideas: decapitating a woman's head and limbs and fitting them into plastic bags requires unflinching col
d-bloodedness. Chopping with a meat cleaver through raw tendon, sinew and bone to severe a body of at least 100 pounds requires brute strength. Depositing these body parts in very public places also did not seem to be a very intelligent act, unless one purposefully wanted them to be found easily.
It is tempting for Filipinos to suppose that racist urbanites who often see them as a caste of servants would find them convenient scapegoats for crimes. After all, the typical Filipino asks, what is it about Singapore that drives people homicidal? Some 140,000 women work in Singapore as maids, mostly from the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Activists contend that many more cases of abuse remain unreported, especially those of workers who enter Singapore illegally and who fear prosecution and jail, then deportation, if exposed. La Puebla's death was neither the first nor the most recent case of homicide or maid abuse in Singapore. The Contemplacion case not only exposed the perceived bias against domestic helpers but also the lack of concern and support the Philippine government had for these overseas workers. Haunted and shamed by that case, the Philippine government was quick to respond this time and was generous in its support for both the La Puebla and Aguilar families. Miriam Cuasay, Manilas labour attache in Singapore, immediately assigned Maria Isleta as Aguilar s Philippine legal counsel. Labor Secretary Patricia Tomas promised to provide financial assistance to the family of the victim. Aguilar was a hard working wife who grew up as an orphan, the third among five siblings. She was in her second year studying Hotel and Restaurant Management at the University of Baguio when she went to work abroad.
Once a Jolly Hangman Page 13